Open the door of human-animal communication with AI

Original source: Science and Technology Daily

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI‌

In ancient myths, there is a bridge where someone understands what animals say with the help of a magic ring and talks to birds, beasts, insects and fish; Learn the language of animals and interact with them. ** With the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the dream of human-animal dialogue may really come true. Some researchers believe that we may soon be able to break through the communication barrier with animals. **

Recently, according to the US “Discover” magazine website, when beluga whales in the ocean communicate with each other, certain vocal signals will reveal their social structure; alarm sound. In response, scientists in the world are building an AI program to decipher animal forms of communication by analyzing huge data sets. **

The principle is somewhat similar to ChatGPT

** How will the AI program that deciphers the “language” of animals be constructed? **

"The principle of the AI program to decipher the animal’language’ is similar to that of ChatGPT. They are both a sequence prediction model that can accurately predict what communication signal will appear next based on the animal’s behavior, or predict the animal’s next behavior based on the communication signal. "Recently, Wu Jiaji, a professor at the School of Electronic Engineering of Xidian University and a scientist of the Chinese Polar Expedition, pointed out in an interview with a reporter from Science and Technology Daily.

Wu Jiaji explained that the ability of this model is to predict subsequent sequence data, such as subsequent text or sound signals, based on known input sequences, such as text language input by humans or sounds made by animals. For example, when we type “I’m sorry”, ChatGPT predicts that the reply “It’s okay” should probably be replied. The reason why the model is able to “learn” this correspondence is because it has statistically found that the combination of “sorry” and “it doesn’t matter” appears the most often by learning a large number of texts from the Internet or various literatures. That is to say, when “I’m sorry” appears, probabilistically speaking, the subsequent text is most likely to appear “It’s okay”. When the model learns enough correspondences of such dialogues, it can respond accordingly to human questions.

“Building a model for learning animal ‘language’ is similar to building a model for learning human language.” Wu Jiaji further explained that scientists will collect a large number of animal communication signals or animal behavior to make an animal behavior data set. Next, the scientists use a sequence prediction model to learn the associations between the animal’s behavior and behavior. Such as bird calls and their corresponding possible follow-up behaviors, and calculate the probability of the combination of specific bird calls and specific behaviors. In this way, when a bird makes a certain call, scientists can use this probability model to predict its next most likely behavior.

However, human language and the way it is expressed is very different from animal “language”, how can scientists deal with this difference to make the model more accurate?

Chen Shaohong, founder of the swanhub open source community, said that the differences between human language and animal “language” are mainly reflected in two aspects: first, human language is basically composed of sounds, and body language accounts for a very small proportion. However, the richness of animal “language” is much higher than that of human beings. Sound, movement, smell, etc. are all important elements that make up animal “language”. Second, human language generally has a clear purpose and direction, while animal “language” is more simple and vague, and it can often only express a few of the most primitive needs and responses, such as hunger or fear. Therefore, deciphering the “language” of animals not only requires the establishment of a variety of animal signal collection methods, but also requires the artificial intelligence model to have the ability to analyze and process data in multiple modalities.

Make it easy to understand animal “language”

Michael Brownstein, a professor at Imperial College London and the chief scientist of Twitter, once said that deciphering the “language” of animals and allowing humans to communicate with animals will be the next step in the development of AI language capabilities**, which is expected to create A bright future for human-animal communication. Compared with previous research, what are the advantages of using AI to decipher animal “language”?

In previous studies, due to limited conditions, it was difficult for scientists to decipher the “language” of animals, so people are more inclined to study whether animals can understand human language. In recent years, with the development of AI technology, scientists can gradually study the specific meaning of the signals transmitted by animals. For example, the University of Milan collected 440 pieces of cat calls in different scenarios, and used machine learning models to distinguish the differences in cat calls in different scenarios. These studies have revealed that some animals do have a certain degree of “language” ability. Animal “language” not only expresses simple physiological needs, but also conveys more complex information such as emotions.

“In addition, previous studies often focused on analyzing the behavior of a single species, and in order to facilitate experiments, the research was often carried out in artificial or specific environments. With the advancement of technologies such as speech recognition and biological signal collection, we can collect Behaviors and signals of different species in the natural state, and build a large animal behavior database covering different species and different environments.” Chen Shaohong said.

Chen Shaohong said that this can help scientists reveal the common relationship between the behavior and communication signals of different species, or the communication relationship between species, and it is even possible to build a unified model that can understand the “language” of all animals based on these data. This deciphering of the “language” of animals will allow people to further understand the lives of animals.

Enhancing the relationship between humans and animals

Although we may never be able to talk to whales about the weather, some small advances in the exploration of animal “language” will greatly improve the relationship between humans and animals, researchers say.

Cohen Slobedkoff, an expert on North American prairie dogs at Northern Arizona University in the United States, believes that even if the thoughts of animals are very different from those of humans, as long as humans can let them understand our wishes a little bit, and at the same time let them We understand some of their wishes, and the relationship between humans and animals will become different from the past.

“Many of the problems we are currently facing, such as the climate crisis and the ravages of epidemics, are related to the fact that humans place themselves in an unequal position with other animals.” Philosopher Iva Mejer when studying the issue of interspecies communication Point out, “We have to learn to listen to the voices of animals.”

“If livestock were able to express their concerns directly to us, the future of livestock farming could be radically changed, and pervasive interspecies communication would compel us to ethically re-examine our relationship with animals and force us to rethink Whether human consumption habits are reasonable, so as to re-evaluate the position of human beings in nature.” Tan Mingzhou, chief strategy officer of Turing Robotics and partner of AJ Fund, pointed out.

Tan Mingzhou said that the study of animal “language” models will help us understand and guide the behavior of wild animals more deeply, which will be of great help to the protection of nature. In addition, studying the animal “language” model may also solve the problem of communication between humans and pets. Future research on animal “language” may help us better understand the demands and ideas of pets, so that humans can communicate with pets in a more natural way. Get along and reduce conflicts.

Wu Jiaji added that the study of animal “language” can also reveal part of the secrets of human language evolution. There have always been underlying similarities between human speech and animal “languages,” such as the fact that almost all human speech and animal vocalizations consist of pauses and changes in syllable length and pitch. The study of animal “language” may help humans explain the production of human language from the perspective of evolution and biological mechanism.